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Next Year in Jerusalem

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Next Year in Jerusalem Next Year In Jerusalem In the book, “Anatomy of a Search”, Rabbi Akiva Tatz tells a story of a young Jewish man searching for meaning in the East who was given an article by my sister Ellen Willis in Rolling Stone magazine. The monk who gave him the article, a Jew who had become a Buddhist, suggested that he read the article and go check out his own heritage first in Jerusalem. I can vouch for the story, because he came first to find me in Jerusalem. And his story wasn’t unique, because many spiritual seekers over the years found their search reflected in my sister’s article. It can probably be truthfully said that no single work in English about the process of teshuva -- certainly no work of journalism -- has had such a profound impact on so many people since it was published in April 1977. Since then, and until today, I have been stopped by people who remember my picture in the magazine. They tell me how that article played such a key role in their development when, starting on their path to Jewish observance, they came across or were given it. And invariably, they ask the question: what ever happened to your sister? In fact, my sister, who passed away from cancer five months ago at 64, didn’t go further into Judaism, although her article gave many logical reasons to continue. She would have said that she was listening to her intuition; I think that she was terrified by what it would take to change. But it was her ability to reflect so honestly the struggle between a desire for the truth and a fear of change that made her article such a powerful influence on others, many of whom came to different conclusions than she did. Sometimes, by one act, a person can attain eternity. May the merit of those people who have had their lives changed because of my sister’s honest struggle (and those who even today can continue to identify with it) stay with her forever. – Rabbi Chaim Willis I. GENESIS In the spring of 975, my brother Michael, then 24, was on his way home from his third trip through Asia when he arrived in Israel, planning to stay a few weeks before heading back to New York. On April 28th, he wrote to our parents: “I’ve been staying at, of all things, an Orthodox Jewish yeshiva -- when I got to Jerusalem I went to visit the Wailing Wall and got invited - they hang around there looking for unsuspecting tourists to proselytize. It’s sort of a Jewish Jesus-freak type outfit - dedicated to bringing real Judaism to backsliding Jews. I haven’t been especially impressed by the message, but it’s been a really interesting week.” On June 4th, he wrote me, “I’ve had my lack of faith shaken.” I appreciated the ironic turn of phrase. Then its meaning hit. I read on: “I’ve read and talked about it enough to realize that the arguments for the existence of G-d (a spelling which shows how superstitious I’m becoming) -- and the Jewish version of it at that -- are very plausible and intellectually if not emotionally convincing... It’s frightening, because while I can convince myself of the possibility and even probability of the religion, I don’t like it - its 613 commandments, its puritanism, its political conservatism, its Jews-first philosophy. On the other hand, if it is the truth, not to follow it means turning your back on the truth.” He was postponing his return till the end of July. I called my parents. My mother thought I was being an alarmist -- Mike couldn’t be serious about religion; it was too removed from the way he’d been brought up. “He’s spelling God ‘G-d,’” I said. There is a religious law that you cannot destroy paper on which you have spelled out “God.” Two weeks later they got another letter: “I haven’t written because I’m having trouble describing what’s happening. I feel more and more that I’m trapped into a religion whose truth I can’t deny ... I’ve never given much thought to the existence of God -- my LSD experiences had (same as with Ellen) left me with the idea that there was ‘something’ there, but I never thought it was knowable or explainable (& if it was explainable certainly more in terms of mystical experience & Buddhism than the ‘God of our Fathers’ of Judaism). But my time here has really forced me to come to terms with what that ‘something’ might be ... I’m not Jesus-freaking out -- I haven’t come to this through any blinding moment of illumination or desire to be part of a group - it’s been an intellectual process (which I’ve been fighting emotionally all the way), and I’d like nothing better than to reject it -- I just don’t think I’ll be able to. “The final shock in this letter is that I may not leave here at the end of July. If I accept this as the truth, I have to take time to learn about it.” The “truth” Mike proposed to accept was Judaism in its most extreme, absolutist form: the God of the Old Testament exists; He has chosen the Jewish people to carry out His will; the Torah (the Five Books of Moses and the Oral Law elaborating on them) is literally the word of God, revealed to the Jews at Mt. Sinai; the creation, the miracles in Egypt, and other biblical events actually happened; the Torah’s laws, which are based on 63 mitzvot (commandments) and govern every aspect of one’s existence, must be obeyed in every detail; they are eternal, unchangeable. My parents had the same first impulse: “Let’s go to Israel and bring him home.” My father was already out of his chair and about to leave the house to go buy plane tickets when they looked at each other and decided they were overreacting. My own reaction was a kind of primal dread. In my universe, intelligent, sensible people who had grown up in secular homes in the second half of the 20th century did not embrace biblical fundamentalism - let alone arrive at it through an “intellectual process.” My brother was highly intelligent, had always seemed sensible. What was going on? * * * My father is a retired police lieutenant; my mother is a housewife. They married during the Depression and now live in a house with a paid up mortgage in a modestly middle-class section of Queens, New York. They are college educated, literary-minded and politically liberal. I am the oldest of their three children; my sister, a graduate student in linguistics, is in the middle; Mike is the youngest. Mike and I were born in December, nine years apart almost to the day. The coincidence of birthdays is one of many similarities. If the prospect of Mike’s becoming an Orthodox Jew was frightening, it was not simply because he was my brother, someone I loved. I felt an almost mystical identification with Mike. Our baby pictures were identical, and though Mike was now taller and thinner than I, we had the same fair skin, curly brown hair, and astigmatic, sleepy green eyes. We were (not that I really believed in that stuff -- still --) cliche Sagittarians: analytical, preoccupied with words and ideas. We were inclined to repress feelings; our intellectual confidence coexisted with emotional insecurity and a tendency to depressions. I was fascinated with the notion that Mike was what I might have become had I been a man, the lastborn instead of the first -- a child of the Seventies rather than the Sixties. I wondered 2 how much the differences between us had to do with our circumstances rather than our basic natures. For there were differences, of course. Mike was much more reserved than I; he rarely talked about his feelings, his problems or his relationships. I was more worldly, more willing to compete in and compromise with a hostile system. My friendships were central to my life; he was, or seemed to be, a loner. The qualities we shared were more pronounced in Mike, the opposing tendencies more hidden. Next to him I always felt a bit irrational and uncool. Picture a recurrent family scene: my father and I are sitting in the kitchen, having a passionate political argument. My brother is listening, not saying a word. Suddenly I put myself in his place, become self- conscious. I hear all the half-truths and rhetorical exaggerations that in the emotion of the moment I have allowed to pass my lips. I realize, with chagrin, that my father and I have had, and my brother has listened to, the same argument at least half a dozen times before. I am sure Mike thinks we are ridiculous. I was disturbed and mystified by what I saw as my brother’s swing from a skepticism more rigorous than my own to an equally extreme credulity. How could anyone familiar with the work of a certain Viennese Jew possibly believe in God the Father? What puzzled me even more was Mike’s insistence that he was being reluctantly convinced by irresistible arguments. It seemed to me that his critical intelligence could only be in the way. * * * I knew that connecting On acid I had, as Mike observed, experienced the something with Reality was the that Westerners have most commonly called “God” - the crucial business of life, source of all truth, beauty, goodness.
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